Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to filters and, more particularly, to filters employed in filtering hot cooking oil such as that used in commercial or industrial deep fryers.
Description of the Related Art
Cooking oils, such as those used in commercial or industrial deep fryers, tend to become contaminated with moisture, carbonized food particles, and the like during the frying process. Additionally, the oils themselves tend to break down chemically after extended use. Both the contaminants and the chemical breakdown byproducts have the undesirable characteristics of causing the oil to foam, smoke, smell bad, possess an unsightly appearance, and/or impart a bad taste to the fried food. It has been found that keeping the cooking oil clean by removing the particulate matter and filtering it on a regular basis tends to extend the useful life of the cooking oil and increase the quality and appearance of foods which are cooked therein.
Previous cooking oil filter media include wire mesh strainers, coarse paper, and diatomaceous earth or similar filtering material. Wire mesh strainers are restricted to the removal of large particulate matter. Conventional coarse paper filters (having a pore size of from 4 to 80 microns with a mean pore size on the order of 10 microns) exhibits only moderate filtering effectiveness. Diatomaceous earth and similar filtering materials usually exist in a loose form that is messy and awkward to handle.
Other known cooking oil filter media include filter sheet or filter pad media having a substantially planar form and which combine various filtration mechanisms over a depth of the sheet or pad to filter cooking oil in a particularly efficient manner. The filters described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,440, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, provide examples of such filter media. Other examples of filter pad devices which are particularly effective in filtering cooking oil are marketed by Clarification Technology, Inc of Kirkland, Wash. under the trademark SuperSorb®.
Though filter pad devices, such as those identified above, and other known filter devices provide generally effective means of filtering cooking oil, such known filtration devices nevertheless require periodic replacement at intervals which can be particularly disruptive and which result in significant downtime of host fryer systems. For example, fryer systems in the fast food restaurant industry often require servicing one or more times during any given work shift to replace filter elements.